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Burns’ Documentary Perpetuates the ‘Invisible Minority’

War veterans, community groups and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have protested that Burns’ upcoming PBS series does not feature a single Latino during the entire seven TV segments, totaling more than 800 minutes.

Citing a history of being excluded or marginalized, Latinos took their campaign to PBS, demanding that the TV epic be inclusive of historical fact.

The author makes the point, Some people will contend: “There they go again: Latinos playing the ethnic card.” But this controversy is not about political correctness; it is about historical correctness.  It is about storytellers giving this nation the full story.

Burns is a smart guy and from what I’ve seen of him in interviews he doesn’t seem like an intransigent ideologue, but like many people he is not immune from falling into habits. I like old movies and watch AMC occasionally - if I based my world view of history on old school Hollywood’s version of the old west I would think that all most native Americans were unthinking savages, that African Americans were great dancers, but not very bright and that white western Europeans made every major contribution to world knowledge. But I look at a variety of sources of history and culture to get a better rounded balanced view. My guess is that Burns has fallen into the bubble of celebrity documentarian. he’s won awards and critical praise and his friends and family tell him how wonderful he is- this is the two-headed dragon of success, believing in yourself is great yet as in Burn’s case he doesn’t realize that he has developed tunnel vision.

An estimated half-million Latinos, fighting from Normandy Beach to Iwo Jima, helped the U.S. achieve victory over Hitler, Mussolini and Imperial Japan.  Countless numbers died on the battlefield; researchers count 13 servicemen—11 Mexican-Americans and two Puerto Ricans—who earned the Medal of Honor for heroism.

In that 800 minutes ( over 13 hours) of film Burns has shoe horned in some of the history of Latin American soldiers, but there is no mention in the article of the contribution of native Americans at all. It’s like Burns got into the way-back machine and is making a John Wayne version of history Hollywood style circa 1950.

atlas holding up the earth. putting aside for now what a beautiful example of ancient sculpture this is. i believe that this is how the physical world works. i believe it, thus its true. i have some words written in greek thousands of years ago from people that also believed it too so that just gives my unjustified beliefs more weight - a reference to secret knowledge. unjustified beliefs are so great. no work required, no mental wheel spinning and horrible headaches trying to understand physical laws and the nature of the universe. still to be fair some people and they have always been in the minority think that true knowledge only comes through justification

Theory of justification is a part of epistemology that attempts to understand the justification of propositions and beliefs. Epistemologists are concerned with various epistemic features of belief, which include the ideas of justification, warrant, rationality, and probability. Of these four terms, the term that has been most widely used and discussed in the past twenty years is “justification”. Loosely speaking, justification is the reason why someone (properly) holds the belief, the explanation as to why the belief is a true one, or an account of how one knows what one knows.

If A makes a claim, and B then casts doubt on it, A’s next move would normally be to provide justification. Empiricism (the evidence of the senses), authoritative testimony, and logical deduction are often involved in justification.